Today Is Tax Freedom Day

Such a good job our public education system has done that few Americans can conceive of any other way to have and to run a government except through confiscatory taxation. Because of the same fine group of "educators" over three or four generations, few Americans realize that a government doing what it should, as determined by objective criteria, would cost about 10% of what it does now, if not less. Most Americans think that the system for looting the fruits of their productivity is proper, just, and above all, unavoidable. That's why they keep getting suckered year after year.

Money is the blood which sustains governmental operations. Even tyrannies need money to do what they do, even when doing what they do is doing wrong in everything.

Think about for a moment. What would these politicians and bureaucrats do for power if they could not take your money and the money of others? I will provide one utterly titillating answer of several: They would have to earn governmental finance creatively and morally because they would not have yours to steal. So what would they do for power? They would have NONE!

Americans have little concept of the necessity for and the proper role for a government. As a result, we have the mammoth socialist-moderate faction on one end of the spectrum and ridiculous liberatarian anarcho-capitalists on the other. Both belong in the trash can.

I will leave discussing what constitutes a PROPER government and WHY, as well as HOW, until later. Right now, digest TAX FREEDOM DAY. Note, I did not say "enjoy" it.

WorldNetDaily: Tax Freedom Day April 17 this year , THE POWER TO DESTROY Tax, Freedom Day, April 17 this year--Date Americans stop working for government later than 2004, Posted: April 15, 2005, 1:00 a.m. Eastern, by World Net Daily.

Each year, the Tax Foundation calculates Tax Freedom Day – which compares the number of days Americans work to pay taxes to the number of days they work to support themselves. The nonprofit group points out that while this year's day is two days later than last year, it is "still considerably earlier than in 2000, when the boom and bubble pushed tax burdens to a record high, and Tax Freedom Day was postponed until May 3."

Said the group's president, Scott Hodge, in a statement: "The federal government cut taxes every year for the last four years, and because the bubble in 1999 and 2000 boosted tax collections to artificially high levels, the drop since then is all the more dramatic. Now the tax burden has resumed its more typical upward course. As economic growth pushes people into higher tax brackets, tax collections grow
faster than incomes."

"Despite all the tax cuts that the federal government has passed recently, Americans will still spend more on taxes than they spend on food, clothing and medical care combined," said Hodge.

In 2005, Americans will work 70 days to afford their federal taxes and 37 more days to afford state and local taxes. Other categories of spending measured in the report include housing and household operation (65 days), health and medical care (52 days), food (31 days), transportation (31 days), recreation (22 days), clothing and accessories (13 days), saving (2 days) and all other (44 days).

Four out of the five states with the heaviest tax burdens and the latestTax Freedom Days are in the Northeast: Connecticut (May 3), New York (April 29),New Jersey (April 25), Massachusetts (April 24) and Wyoming (April 24). In general, where the cost of living is high, and salaries are commensurately higher, taxpayers are hard hit by the federal income tax's progressive structure. As a result, they must work longer to pay their disproportionate share of the tax burden, and they wait longer to celebrate Tax Freedom Day, the group points out.

The five states with the lightest total tax burdens celebrate Tax Freedom Day the earliest. Alaska's April 2 is the earliest of all. Alabama (April 4) and Tennessee (April 6) have the second and third lightest tax burdens. South Dakota and Mississippi round out the five most lightly taxed states, celebrating on April 7.